How Did We Find the Atom?

As always, this is the blogified version of my latest YouTube video, which you can watch right here!

An atomic bomb is one of the biggest man-made reactions we can get. The power of this detonation is unfathomable, and the fact that it comes from the smallest thing we know is even more mind-bending. An atomic bomb takes advantage of a chain reaction of atoms splitting, releasing heat and energy in the process… but how exactly did scientists find and exploit this reaction? That’s the question I started with, but then I realized I wanted to go even further back: how did we find the atom? How did scientists discover something so small and learn enough about how it works to break it apart and turn this smallest-scale reaction into the largest in a little over a decade? What was the journey into the atom?

Ancient Concepts of the Atom

The journey to the atomic bomb starts in Ancient Greece with Leucippus and his student, Democritus of Abdera. Like his natural philosopher contemporaries, Democritus sought an all-encompassing theory to explain everything in nature. He settled on the theory of atomos, which literally means “indivisible” — tómos means “cut” or “slice,” and the privative alpha denotes the opposite.